


It's A Gift... We Keep Those

by LadyPoly



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 12x23 coda, Angst with a Happy Ending, Chick-Flick Moments, Confession, Feelings, Gen, Love, M/M, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 19:22:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11538822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyPoly/pseuds/LadyPoly
Summary: Castiel is dead. Dean is still waiting for the moment he comes back as he remembers everything and regrets what he never had the courage to say.Set just after Castiel had been killed by Lucifer in the Season 12 finale.Artwork by MissArtsy, who was sweet and awesome enough too bless this story with her talent and surprise me with it.





	It's A Gift... We Keep Those

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Desirae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desirae/gifts).



> Gifted for Desirae who said this accurately in ways was what she hoped too see. Thank you for letting me bounce ideas and snippets for this.
> 
> For "It's A Gift.. We Keep Those" by MissArtsy! She blessed this fic with beautiful artwork! The art is here: https://imgur.com/a/jnVfm  
> Her blog: https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/missartsy 
> 
>    
> Dearest Readers,
> 
> It would appear that not only were several of my works copied and posted as someone else’s and that a few people I trusted have also stolen ideas, images created and scenes.
> 
> Should you compare my stories to something I have not said was inspired by a prompt, or that someone has stolen, in the comments of the story please share it with the link, or the place it was and the writer's name or username. I will do what I can to contact them on my own if I need to. Please do not engage them yourselves. If I need help, I will sound the bat signal ;)
> 
> While I have dealt with the people involved the best I can, with the help of loyal reader’s and friends, I have to ask that you please keep this in mind. In the last several weeks it has become very clear to me that the majority of fanfic writers don't understand plagiarism. Stealing ideas without crediting, borrowing quotes, etc and claiming it as your own-- plagiarism. A form of fraud. You cannot take something blow for blow, change the setting and claim that either. An homage is also not done this way, and if you believe so-- it’s still a form of plagiarism.
> 
> When you cite the fandom, the characters etc, you show that you have given credit for the idea. What the writer does next if not stating a prompt and it’s source is their own. The canon ideas are given credit, the divergent is their own.
> 
> Now sometimes similarities inspired by scenes happen, but there is no reason why a comparison of the two should be clear. There is no reason for one writer’s voice to still be evident if you were inspired by their story while claiming your own idea.
> 
> I want to say this didn’t anger me, or hurt me but it did. It infuriated me and to be honest, I didn’t know if I should continue.
> 
> If I am slower to post things now, it is only due to feeling unsure. I am very sorry.
> 
> All my love,  
> LadyPoly  
>  

It’s been hours--the sky is growing lighter now and with each small ray of taffy and orange against the flint sky, Dean’s heart cracks into smaller and smaller pieces. His voice is hoarse from praying, his mouth like sandpaper. The front of him is covered in blood that had dried hours ago, no longer tacky and soaked into the ground around them.

Dean finally screams, having been silent from where his brother stood before till now. It’s a strangled sound, nothing but pure rage towards the Heavens. It nearly makes Sam vomit, bile rising to his throat as he looks on.

Sam feels completely helpless, frozen, and watches as Dean becomes something unrecognizable, even to him. From behind him, something with glowing amber coloured eyes in the body of a teenager, a new adult--stays silent, half clothed in Sam’s flannel and draped in a blanket. He doesn’t talk, doesn’t move. Sam hates it as tears track down his cheeks again.

Why did it have to be Castiel?

“Bring him back!” Dean’s right hand is still buried in Castiel’s, despite the flesh having grown cold. There’s a part of him desperate to keep it heated, waiting for them to twitch, to squeeze back with the same desperation in which he’s holding onto him.

Everything around them stays the same. No one is listening.

Beside him, Cas’ lips are blue--pale doesn’t even begin to describe the shade of gray Dean keeps staring at through blurry, heated tears. He looks like he could just be sleeping.

The dark around them still lets some part of Dean hold onto to the illusion. The hope.

“You always bring him--” Dean chokes, “You always bring him back! Always!”

Sam balls his hands into fists, head lowered and defeated as his nails cut moon like shapes into his palm. No wonder Dean never had any faith.

_“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.”_

Nearly nine years have passed and yet, he can still smell the barn, can still feel the heated sparks that rained down from the exploding lights and the shivers that zinged up and down his spine when that voice first floated up to his ears as Castiel planted his feet on the earth again.

_“You don’t think you deserved to be saved.”_

His eyes were so blue, and he changed the air in the space between them with just one look. Castiel had, in fact, changed everything from that moment on and Dean should have seen it for what it really was sooner. He still didn’t think he deserved to be saved, but Cas did and that’s what mattered this entire time, didn’t it?

No matter what, it was always about him and Castiel, wasn’t it?

_“I’m hunted. I rebelled and I did it, all of it, for you.”_

Always about him, and Dean was so caught up in everything else to notice.

Even when they were backed into the toughest corners, even when the light at the end of the tunnel was gone--they found their way in the dark.

Not even time or winged Angels were going to keep them apart. He promised he would do better than the future him, that he would be better for Castiel so it would never happen.

_“Don’t ever change.”_

In the end, he wasn’t sure he had, but Cas was forever loyal.

_“Hey Ass-butt!”_

He went out without any fear, for them, for Dean.

Dean gives a broken, proud smile into the dewy air around them and clutches Castiel’s coat in his free hand, twisting the fabric in his fist like a lifeline. Closing his eyes, he can feel the weight of Castiel’s hand on his shoulder like he had as he sat on his knees when the ground swallowed Sam whole.

“You gave him back…” he whispers, voice broken, his chest ripped open and insides twisted, “Why is now any different?”

_“I do everything you ask. I always come when you call.”_

“Cas…please...”

Bile rises in Dean’s stomach, the image of a sopping trench coat in his hands, black ooze still staining the tawny fabric. It still smelled like Castiel when he had held it, whatever the mix of summer rain and something he never could quite explain was. The lump in his throat gags him as he breathes that in again before death snatches it away, taints it.

_“Dumb son of a bitch.”_

But that hadn’t been what he really wanted to say. Not really. Not deep down in that strange part of him that had formed since Castiel arrived in their lives, since they formed a bond, as the Angel kept calling it. He had wanted to say he understood it in the end, understood his desperation and his want to do something that just fixed everything. That he forgave him for what he did to Sam, to Bobby. Most of all, for what he did to Dean…after all, it was Cas.

_“I deserved to die. Now, I can’t possibly fix it…So why did I even walk out of that river?”_

_“Maybe to fix it?”_

So many times now, so many moments. Never giving up and always trying to do the right thing, always trying to give the other what they felt they deserved.

_“Cas, buddy, I need you.”_

He had looked so hard for Castiel in Purgatory. Despite everything, he still felt that he left him behind, even if Cas chose to stay.

_“You can't save everyone, my friend...though, you try.”_

He needed to save Castiel, though, despite always being forced apart and then brought back together.

He stopped caring how it looked, how it sounded. It was all about Castiel. There just wasn’t a point if he didn’t see him again. Didn’t save him.

What was the point now if he had failed to save him and couldn't bring him back?

_“I need you.”_

After Purgatory, he promised, he vowed to himself that nothing was gonna make him worry like that again. Nothing. He wasn't going to let anyone not even heaven take Castiel away from him.

_“You really believe we three will be enough?”_

_“We always have been.”_

But he royally screwed that up, didn’t he? He had failed to show that all this time and then ran them right into the ground with the Mark of Cain. Dean almost killed him, and yet Cas didn’t give up. He just got distant, further apart somehow, despite everything. Regardless of, _“I could go with you,”_ and the relief when it was all okay, even if it didn’t last.

“ _I love you. I love all of you.”_

Dean finally sobs, every last ounce of him imploding under the weight of knowing Cas had said it, that Cas had been braver than he ever was.

Dean knew Cas wasn’t just family but something more, and yet he never let Cas believe otherwise. He slams his fists down on Cas’ chest and stills in sickening agony.

The mixtape is still in the Angel’s pocket.

_“It’s a gift, Cas. You keep those.”_

Did Cas ever know what he was really trying to say with those songs?

Dean would give anything to hold Castiel now, to keep him close. He had been given something amazing, a gift so many times, again and again, and Dean had forgotten to really show him that, hadn’t he? He had shoved Cas in right beside Sam, hoped that his half ass attempts would do, what only saying the words ever would to put Cas in the place he truly belonged.

Now it was too late.

Defeated, soul twisted in lonely devastation and the sky lightening, Dean finally moves. He breathes, like it’s the first time he’s done so since it happened as everything around him is a foggy grayish haze.

Morning is coming, and the sun is still rising despite Dean’s entire world stopping. It hurts to breathe, to exist like this.

Somehow it doesn’t seem fair.

It isn’t fair.

Cas deserved better.

Cas deserved better than Dean.

Laying down in the earth where the Angel fell, Dean maneuvers the weight of the lifeless man he loves so that their arms meet on Cas’ chest, their fingers intertwined. He buries his face in the crook of Cas’ neck, inhaling his scent, Dean’s hair knocking into the bottom of his chin.

Dean thought about this so many times, imagined them curled on his bed together and happy. Yet he never had the courage, never had the guts to ask.

Laying in the dirt now, the cold of it against his limbs and where his coat sits away from his waist, Dean wonders if he can will his heart to stop beating.

In the morning light, the evidence is glaring. This is it. Castiel really is gone. The ash on the ground defeats even Dean’s ability to be in denial.

Seconds are like hours, and Dean realizes in his grief, that eventually they have to leave here like this. He closes his eyes and holds Cas against him tighter.

Wrapped in the blanket, Jack moves forward, Sam trailing behind with his blade drawn, unsure of the creature's movements. He had startled Sam, the hunter lost inside his head, a movie of Cas and his brother on repeat when Jack suddenly stood and began to walk outside without so much a breath. Sam scrambled behind him, surprised that so much time had passed as he waited for Dean to leave his grief stricken hell.

Sam swallows down more tears as he sees them curled together. 

Slowly, Jack approaches the place where the Seraph fell, head tilted as he studies what he’s seeing. Despite the evidence before him, something about the way they are, the way they’re entangled is beautiful. It pulls at him, images of things he saw when he took over Castiel. Suddenly all those images and feelings have context like this, meaning.

Jack feels a weight in his chest he didn't have before.

They had tried to help him, and yet his Father left them with nothing more than the broken pieces of themselves. Again. After all, Sam has been thinking of images that paint a picture of his Father that even he can understand.

“He loved you...Dean Winchester,” his voice sounds strange, nothing like the men he’s heard talk since this all began. It’s higher, younger, but they get the Hunter’s attention as he sits up, eyes and face growing into something dark, cold.

Dean moves to protect Castiel even now. Even when it’s pointless.

“You love him as well.”

It isn’t a question, after all. He can feel the pain radiating from Dean from where he stands, the way the broken bond formed screams to everything around them that it has been severed. Dean turns, body once again void of fight and takes Castiel’s hand.

“I do.”

Sam stares at Dean, eyes wide because he didn’t deny it, didn’t even try to fight it as he drapes himself over the Angel. He buries his face into Castiel’s chest, above where he wants his heart to be beating and cries, “I love him so much and I fucked it--I messed it up.”

Sam falls to his knees, his body shielding Dean’s as he buries his face in Dean’s hair, like Dean once did for him when he was small, when he was afraid of the entire world. Like Dean did when he lost Jess.

“I’m so sorry, Dean…” Sam’s heart lays twisted and broken for them both. When was it all just going to stop hurting?

Jack looks up as the first warm rays of the sunshine fall over the space around them. The towering trees, blades of kelly green grass, birds singing something nearly mournful, and a breeze that danced around them gently, tiptoeing so as to not disturb them.

The world keeps spinning, keeps moving ahead, yet another ends before him.

Leaning down, Jack cups the chilled skin of the vessel once belonging to Jimmy Novak, once given life by an Angel who just wanted to do the right thing--who loved so full and simple, and begins to glow.

Jack pours every ounce of himself into the vessel he had been inside not so long ago with a purpose. He will use his powers like Castiel has, to help, to strengthen bonds.

Dean closes his eyes and sobs harder when Sam clings to him,

“I-...”

A heart begins to beat, gray slips into something warmer and the earth gives back what it drank so greedily.

“Love-”

The shadow of the wings against the ground begin to move, crawling back towards the space where Castiel lay against the ground,

“Him.”

A breath, one that sends grace roaring throughout the body with warmth like that of the sun burning before them.

Castiel sits up with a gasp, shoving the Hunter away as he greets the morning and finds himself once again tethered to the Earth rather than scattered in ash and broken energy.

Dean falls into the ground beside Sam, both of them frozen as they watch the power move around them. Cas lights up with grace, glowing brighter than anything either has ever seen before. Cas makes the sun look dim, dull in comparison.

“Cas?”

Dean’s voice is so small, afraid, untrusting of what he’s seeing when they both stop glowing. Dean reaches out, cupping the other side of the Angel’s face in disbelief when his eyes open, trembling and wondering if maybe this is it, this is where he’s finally snapped under the weight of his own mental health.

“Dean…?”

It’s a bit confused, Cas’ hand touching where the blade had pierced him, but it’s enough as the gruff low sound seems to echo louder than anything Dean has ever heard.

He makes a strangled sound, something strange when he meets cerulean eyes of the bluest blue Dean has ever seen, his favorite color he never tells anyone about. They steal his words as the tears fall when his lip quivers.

Cas stares at Dean, eyes finding Sam before he turns, then staring at Jack, taking in everything around him. There is a nod between them, an unspoken conversation before Cas lands in the dirt, wind knocked from his vessels rib cage--and Dean above him. His neck is wet with hysterical tears almost immediately as Dean hugs him tight enough it would hurt a human in normal circumstances, he’s sure.

Castiel feels himself get choked up in return.

Pressed together, crushed under Dean’s weight, Cas curls his arms around Dean, eyes closing in understanding as he buries his face in the locks of hair upon the hunter's head. The scent of leather, the Impala, and everything Dean, floods him like a prayer. He holds Dean closer than he ever has, afraid to let him go.

He can feel it across their bond, hear Dean echo inside of him. His pain, his fear, his anger, grief and most of all, his love.

That spark he tried to ignore, that ripple in his prayer, his longing and his soul. Castiel had tried not to let it give him hope, tried to ignore it but now, now it was uncaged, free and Father it would consume even him.

“I love you, too.”

Their lips meet in a heated force of power, every ounce of Dean crushing against him as his hands twist in the fabric of his coat with his admission.

Their kiss seems endless. Sam shakes his head. Dean loves chick flick moments, there is no denying it anymore. He watches Jack shift uncomfortably, finally looking more human, more alive than he had in the house.

“I want to protect what you all fight for, not what my Father wishes,” Jack mutters after a moment, averting his gaze from the pair before him as he looks to Sam. 

The sun shines brighter than it ever has and for the first time Sam feels like they finally have a win, especially when he sees Cas go in for another kiss when they break apart and Dean is as pink as the fading sun rise behind him.

Neither of them has ever looked happier laying in the grass, surrounded by warm rays of sunshine.

Sam looks up at the sky, and for the first time truly remembers what hope feels like. Perhaps not everything born of evil would stay that way.

After all, no one knew that better than him.

He places a hand on Jack’s shoulder and smiles.

(Full comic in link via notes) 


End file.
